Monday, 11 March 2013

The Group Project; Week Two

Pudding Lane Productions Group Photo on the British Library visit

In week two the groups, including ours,
had the opportunity to visit the British Library for the day. During
the visit we were given a fantastic tour of the building learning
about the history of the building and how it operates today in a
modern society. One of the things I was most fascinated by was the
Kings Library tower at the heart of the library. Immediately upon
entering the building the tall glass tower which houses books
collected by King George III made a huge impression on me and during
the tour I had plenty of questions to ask and was fascinated by the
pure volume of books kept within the tower, the age of the material
and the potentially infinite value of what I found in front of
me.

Our group were then given the pleasure to be led to the
'Map Room' within the library to look at originals of the digital
copies of various historical maps courtesy of Stella Wisdom (British
Library) and Tom Harper (Curator of Antiquarian Mapping). It was a
fantastic opportunity to be able to see a selection of maps and other
reference material first hand and right up close. The whole group
spent a good length of time pouring over the maps and it was a great
opportunity to discuss more ideas of what we would all like to
achieve from the project. The group/ team were coming up with lots of
new inspiring ideas and it was awesome to be able to demonstrate
these ideas using the actual maps in front of us.

As we discussed I noticed that one of
the larger maps in the room was actually of a much later date than we
were hoping to recreate in the project but the smaller map at the
corner of the table which was London after the Great Fire by John
Leake, 1667 which seemed like the closest we were going to to get to
the date of the time we were hoping to construct which we agreed was
going to be 'the latest point in time before the
great fire'. This was decided as we all wanted to accurately recreate
the London streets of the time with no effect of damage or
destruction from the fire. It was agreed that this is the map we
would work from throughout the project so that we could ensure that
there would be a consistency throughout from the whole group.

One
of the things I was mostly interested in when surveying the maps was
the actual scale of things, something I would take upon myself to
look into further in the next week in order to begin to give the
group a real idea of things such as the width's of the individual
streets to further enhance the accuracy of the project. To quote from
the group blog, during our discussions at the British Library, we had
gathered some general ideas about what we wanted to create for the
project; a gloomy, depressed City of London at the latest point
before the Great Fire started, ridden with plague and filth in a
sheet of mist and smog. The plan for the following week then was to
begin elaborate on our initial ideas and concepts with more in depth
concepting and mood boards so that we could begin to establish more
definite and detailed plans for a consistent art style. I myself was
given the daunting task of concepting for our main focal area,
Pudding Lane for week three!

Below are a selection of Photographs I took during the visit to the British Library.

The Kings Library Tower

The Kings Library Tower

These images also show some of the photographs I was able to take of the maps showing great detail.

London after the Great Fire by John Leake 1667, copperplate engraving (the map we wil be using throughout our project)

Key on the map of London after the Great Fire by John Leake 1667

A little more information on the map we decided to use as the main reference point during the construction of our 17th Century London Streets (as shown in the photographs above), taken from the Crytek Off the Map student handbook;

London after the Great Fire by John
Leake, 1667, Cpperplate engraving. A map of London drawn after the
Great Fire of London (1666) had destroyed most of the land within the
city walls. The area which has been destroyed is shown as shaded,
with the buildings still standing in profile around the edge. A large
percentage of the buildings of London were made of wood, and
therefore would not have stood a chance. This map shows the plan for
the rebuilding of London, superimposed on top of the shaded area. It
also has dotted lines showing the boundaries of the various
jurisdictions because, with everything razed to the ground, who could
have known where one boundary stopped and another started? St Paul's
Cathedral, in the middle, would not be rebuilt for another 50 years.